OAKLAND—There it was, in a short burst of words from Stephen Curry, at the end of a long day of shooting, passing, dribbling, defending, and winning.

There it was, said straight from the mind and soul, encompassing everything he had just done and everything he can do.

“I’m never afraid of a shot,” Curry said calmly and firmly. “Never.”

Dead solid truth: Curry is not afraid of any shot, even the ones you can’t imagine, because he has already pictured them, tried them, and made them.

In fact, Curry in this case was specifically talking about the 40-foot shots from the locker room tunnel alongside the court, which he takes at the end of every pregame warm-up session at Oracle Arena.

Curry said these words late Monday night, after he made eight of 14 shots to help the Warriors to an easy victory over Washington.

Before the game, I watched and charted his entire 17-minute warm-up session with assistant Bruce Fraser—which began about 90 minutes before tip-off–starting with a two-ball dribbling drill.

Then the session ended with five attempts and five misses from halfway inside the Oracle tunnel on passes from courtside security guard Curtis Jones; and those were the shots that Curry recounted with the most animation.

As if it was another part of the game. His game.

“I didn’t do it every single game until last year; but it won’t stop now,” Curry said, noting that he has made about 20 of them in 36 home games so far this season.

For anybody else, the tunnel shot would be just a crowd-pleasing trick; in fact, former Warrior Monta Ellis used to finish many of his sessions in the same way.

But for Curry, there is a point to the flashy way he ends his pregame work, because there is a point to every millisecond of what he does and every shot he fires up there.

If he can imagine it, he can make it.

Not counting the tunnel tries, Curry put up 182 shots in the session I watched—made 120—and within the structure of his work, you saw the essence of Curry’s offensive game.

“Five minutes of ball handling, just get warm, get your hands kind of used to the ball,” Curry said, describing how it all starts.

“Then… get some flip shots and runners, just to work on your touch. Hopefully, you start close to the basket; you see the ball going in a lot more.

“Then it’s just working around the arc in five spots—catch-and-shoot, off-the-dribble and then shooting threes.”

Curry does almost the exact same routine before every game, for just over 15 minutes every time, and aims to make 31 three-pointers and about 80 two-pointers of various types, at different spots, using either hand for the close-in shots.

The mood is serious, the work is serious. Curry shared some laughs with Fraser and David Lee, who always works out at the same time, but a huge majority of the session, Curry looked like he was in the middle of a game.

“Once you step on the court for that 15-minute session, that kind of starts the game process,” Curry said.

Before the session, Curry said he’d put emphasis on dribbling into a three-point shot because he expected Washington’s big men to jump out on pick-and-rolls but give him a little room to maneuver.

Curry was off-and-on with that shot in the pregame session, but you could tell he was finding a rhythm.

Game result: Curry was five-for-eight on three-pointers, many of them after he dribbled away from the Wizards big man jumping out on the pick-and-roll.

“That’s what the third sequence of every spot is (in the pregame session),” Curry said after the game. “I think that was locked in all night when I was shooting and it transferred to the game.”

During the pregame work, Curry frowned when he went five-for-11 from the right wing at one point (“I got cold there for a second,” he said later), then a few spots later got red-hot and hit 17 consecutive shots from the left wing.

At other points, Curry mixed in wild running one-handed floaters and then buried five consecutive 28-footers.

That was when you saw exactly where the process blends into the artistry for Curry, the potential 2015 NBA Most Valuable Player and the leader of the team with the league’s best record.

“You know when not to turn around because of the way the shot feels, if that makes any sense,” Curry said of his famous no-look swishes during practice and games.

“As soon as you let it go, you know if it’s good or not or if it’s on-line or not.”

How can Curry make all those improvised, zig-zagging, swish-it-while-he-falls-to-the-ground shots?

Because he does this, before every game. Because of who he is.

“His hand-eye coordination is far superior to everyone I’ve ever seen,” said Fraser, who has previously worked these kinds of sessions with Steve Nash in Phoenix. “Nash is really good, too; Steph’s might even be better.”

As an example, Fraser recalled the Warriors’ recent team trip to a bowling alley in Minnesota on an off-day.

“I don’t know how often (Curry) bowls, but he’s not bowling all the time, right?” Fraser said. “But he’s throwing it like a pro… he’s got spin, his balls are going out on the gutter and then coming back in.

“Then one time he had a pick up a spare, and he reverse spins it! Who does that? Any of these trick shots… he works on them, but he’s gifted.”

Towards the end of each session, Curry and Fraser get in some physical one-on-one work; Fraser emphasizes the pressure by leaning on Curry and trying to muscle him off the spot.

On this night, Curry responded by bowing his back to push Fraser away then stagger-dribbling left and right… and making six of his eight shots as Fraser lunged at him.

“He’s stronger than he looks and he’s real torque-y,” Fraser said. “He can be here, get you going you one direction and he’ll be way over here”—Fraser points five feet away–“the next. I’ve never seen or played with a guy with that kind of force and the ability to move.”

But Curry also knows there is no exact science to this—a great pregame session doesn’t guarantee a great game.

It works the opposite way, too.

“Actually the only two games I scored 50 were two of my worst shooting performances pregame,” Curry said with a laugh, noting his 54-point performance at Madison Square Garden in February 2013 and his 51-point torching of Dallas last month.

“So if you’d have asked me walking off the court—I’d still be confident—but I’d say I’ve got to do something better, because I was bricking all over the place…

“(Before the Dallas game), me and Bruce actually kind of stopped mid-work-out. I got to the top of the key and we’re just looking at each other, ‘What’s going on?’

“And then it turns out nothing was wrong.”

Curry didn’t smile or chuckle when he said this; he wasn’t being cocky or devil-may-care.

It’s just part of the process for him, but he knows there’s fate, inspiration and grand artistry in there, too, starting 90 minutes before tip-off, when the shots go up and Curry gets in the moment.